Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
go and get it, the flowers will die at the end of the season and all those tons of honey
will go to waste. All that money will simply have dried up in front of your eyes. If, on
the other hand, you have bees, they will go and get it for you for free, and you can then
either eat it or sell it or both.
Bees are probably the only livestock that use other people's land without permission
- and those landowners welcome them. It is a win-win situation for the bee and for
everyone else. Your bees are happy carrying out their work; you can enjoy your hobby or
business, and if you want to you can make a profit; the farmers get their crops pollinated
and so they make a profit; the shops obtain food to sell and they make a profit; the
general public have food to eat; and the government is happy that its agricultural and
environmental sectors are running smoothly and that somewhere along the line they
will be able to raise some tax.
Bees and the economy
Don't forget that governments regard the whole set-up as so important that they
are willing to spend millions on ensuring that the status quo does not change and
that nothing happens to harm it. Recent research in the USA has valued crops that
require pollination by honey-bees at an estimated $24 billion annually, and the value of
commercial bee pollination on contracts at around $10 billion annually. These are huge
figures by any standard and they show that bees are big business.
Using honey in medicine
Honey sale value, on the other hand, is much less, at $285 million annually in the USA.
However, now that hard clinical trials are showing that certain types of honey can
provide antibiotic wound treatments more effectively and with fewer side-effects than
conventional treatments, this non-pollination side of beekeeping has become a rapidly
growing industry. Active manuka honey has been shown to beat the MRSA super-bug
with no side-effects to the patient and is used in burn dressings. Buckwheat honey
has been found in clinical trials to be more effective as a cough treatment than many
over-the-counter cough medicines. Honey is no longer old Gran's remedy for colds or
an 'alternative' therapy. It is now a mainstream medicine available on national health
systems and used in hospitals in the UK, the USA and other countries.
